Jeff Denson was a singer before taking up the electric bass as a funk-and-rock-loving Virginia teenager. He soon found his way to jazz and Charles Mingus, the explosive double bassist and composer who inspired Denson to master the acoustic instrument.

Denson quit singing publicly for years. But after moving to New York in 2010, he sang two tunes on his first album as a leader, “Secret World.” The venerable alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, with whom Denson worked for a decade, listened to the record as they flew across the Atlantic for a European tour. Then at the Bimhaus in Amsterdam, in the midst of playing the old chestnut “Alone Together,” Konitz suddenly announced Denson was going to sing. It was news to Denson.

“He put the microphone in front of me, so I just sang wordlessly over the melody. It was very spontaneous,” recalls 42-year-old Denson, a prolific composer and arranger who has sprinkled a few vocals on most of his records since then.

But his pleasing new album, “Outside My Window,” is the first featuring his singing throughout.

“(In the past), I wasn’t writing for my voice,” says Denson, a California Jazz Conservatory professor. “This album was really about me wanting to sing, and thinking about material that would really suit my voice.”

Denson, who sings with clarity and grace, plans to perform this music — a mix of originals and newly arranged songs by Jeff Buckley, Abbey Lincoln, Peter Gabriel and Chris Cornell — at San Jose Jazz Summer Fest’s Adobe Silicon Valley Stage on Saturday, Aug. 11.

Rather than the musicians on the record (among them Berkeley-reared saxophonist Dayna Stephens), he’s playing with three noted local associates: bassoonist Paul Hanson, using electronics to create sounds played on Moog synthesizer on the album; Dahveed Behroozi on piano and electric keyboard; and drummer Alan Hall.

As a bassist, Denson says he has always thought about “playing my solos like a singer,” and his singing reflects his dedication to playing the bass and “what that has taught me about music, phrasing and timbral choices. Working with a bow on the double bass — that’s such a singing sound! I think of my voice as an instrument.”

On this electro-acoustic release, he gets inside “Bird Alone” by the late Lincoln, whose careful shaping of every note and Billie Holiday-infused phrasing (“the way she pulls and pushes on the time”) inspired him.

Denson was thinking of President Trump and the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville when he wrote “Have We Really Gone This Far?,” a quirky, unsettling piece using prepared piano (objects affixed to the strings and hammers). The intended feeling is “dysfunctional and unstable,” explains Denson, whose not-too-specific lyrics are open to interpretation.

“For me, it’s dealing with the Trump administration and what’s happening in our country. But I want you to be able to put in your life and find meaning in it.”

For more information, go to https://summerfest.sanjosejazz.org

Marin nest

Over the next few weeks, artist Jayson Fann and volunteers will be building one of his large-scale “Spirit Nests” on Children’s Island in the Marin Center lagoon. They’re weaving it with stump sprouts, fall branches and lower limbs of eucalyptus trees — invasive and highly flammable — removed from the Terra Linda/Sleepy Hollow Preserve as part of Marin County Parks’ fire fuel management.

Goats rid the preserve of poison oak (and anything else they could consume) before the limb-gathering began. Scheduled for unveiling Aug. 19, the big nest will be a temporary, touchable art work that speaks to environmental stewardship.

Powerhouse Jennifer Hudson is booked to sing at the 24th Annual Music Festival for Brain Health on Sept. 15 at the Staglin Family Vineyard in Rutherford, a high-end fundraiser for brain-disorder research that features a scientific symposium, fine wines and comestibles.